I Thought I Was Coping. Maybe I Was Just Withdrawing.

For a long time, I thought I was coping.

I was still functioning.

Still working. Still making things. Still building ideas. Still turning up where I had to turn up.

And because I could do all of that, I assumed I must be OK.

But lately I’ve started to wonder whether I wasn’t actually coping at all.

Maybe I was just getting very good at withdrawing.

At making my world smaller.

At protecting myself from disappointment, from people, from noise, from conflict, from all the things that seemed to scrape against me a little too hard.

I think sometimes we mistake survival strategies for wellness.

If we can still get through the day, we tell ourselves we’re fine.

If we can avoid the people or situations that hurt us, we tell ourselves we’ve found peace.

If we can keep moving, keep producing, keep answering the messages, keep doing the shopping, keep smiling at the right moments, we assume that means we’re managing.

But there’s a difference between peace and retreat.

And I’m not sure I always knew which one I was choosing.

Closer to the edge than we realise

I think a lot more people are close to the edge than we realise.

Not necessarily in a way that anyone around them would notice.

They still go to work.

They still make packed lunches.

They still send cheerful messages.

They still put the washing on.

They still remember birthdays and book appointments and reply “yes, all good” when somebody asks how they are.

But underneath that, there can be this feeling of being completely spent.

As though life has become a series of tiny demands arriving on top of one another until something completely insignificant becomes the thing that tips you over.

The wrong tone in a message.

Something breaking.

A bill.

A cancelled plan.

Someone letting you down.

A conversation that makes you realise you are not quite as understood as you thought you were.

And suddenly it isn’t about that one thing.

It’s about all of it.

Everything you’ve held.

Everything you’ve swallowed.

Everything you’ve told yourself wasn’t worth making a fuss about.

Everything you managed yesterday and the day before that and the day before that.

Sometimes the smallest thing opens the door and the whole lot comes through.

There are days when I don’t want to participate in any of it

There are moments when I look at the world and think: I don’t want to do this anymore.

Not in some dramatic, beautifully articulated way.

More like a deep exhaustion with participating in a world that often feels completely at odds with how I want to live.

Everything is so fast.

So noisy.

So performative.

So certain.

Everyone appears to have an opinion about how everyone else should be living.

There is pressure to respond, to achieve, to belong, to keep up, to make yourself understandable.

And sometimes I just think I would quite like to go and live in a woodland and speak to absolutely nobody.

No notifications.

No expectations.

No explaining myself.

No being misunderstood.

No feeling like I’m standing slightly to the side of the world watching everybody else apparently understand the rules.

There is something incredibly appealing about disappearing into quiet.

But I’ve also had to ask myself whether that desire is always about peace.

Or whether sometimes it is simply exhaustion.

Whether I want solitude because solitude is nourishing me, or because I have lost faith in people.

Those are not quite the same thing.

The loneliness of not fitting

One of the hardest feelings for me has always been the sense of being slightly outside things.

Seeing the world differently.

Feeling things deeply.

Not always understanding why certain things seem perfectly normal or acceptable to everyone else when they feel completely wrong to me.

Then every now and again, you meet somebody and think:

Oh.

You get it.

You see it too.

There is such relief in that.

And when that connection turns out not to be what you thought it was, the disappointment can feel disproportionately huge.

Because you haven’t simply lost a relationship.

You’ve lost the feeling of finally being understood.

That can make withdrawing feel safer.

You start thinking perhaps it is better not to need anyone.

Better not to trust too much.

Better not to expect people to understand.

Better to build a life where nobody can disappoint you because you have stopped letting anyone close enough to do it.

Except, of course, there is a cost to that.

You stop getting hurt.

But you also stop being held.

Maybe the answer isn’t fitting in

I think I’ve spent a lot of my life believing that belonging meant finding somewhere I could finally fit.

Maybe that was the wrong idea.

Maybe belonging isn’t finding the right-shaped hole and changing yourself until you slide neatly into it.

Maybe it is finding somewhere you don’t have to fit at all.

Somewhere you can arrive as you are.

Somewhere there isn’t one person in charge of everybody else’s healing.

Somewhere nobody is trying to fix you.

Nobody is trying to diagnose your life.

Nobody is competing to be the wisest person in the room.

Nobody needs you to perform happiness, positivity, spirituality or resilience.

Just a room full of people allowed to be where they are.

That feels radically different to me.

Not sameness.

Not agreement on everything.

Not everybody thinking the same thoughts.

Just safety.

Curiosity.

Kindness.

Enough space to be human.

I’m beginning to think community is the antidote

For a while, my instinct has been to retreat.

To make my world smaller.

To shut the door.

To think, I’ll be fine if I just remove all the things that hurt.

But perhaps that isn’t the answer.

Perhaps the opposite of overwhelm isn’t isolation.

Perhaps it is connection without demand.

Community without hierarchy.

Company without pressure.

Being around people where you don’t have to explain every part of yourself before you’re allowed to relax.

Maybe it looks very ordinary.

A table.

Tea.

Somebody making something.

Someone sitting quietly.

Someone laughing too loudly.

Someone having a dreadful week.

Someone who doesn’t really want to talk.

Somebody arriving alone and realising that is completely fine.

Nobody arriving to be fixed.

Nobody leaving with a ten-step plan to become a better human.

Just people being people together.

I think that might be much closer to what I’ve been trying to create all along.

Maybe this is the thread through everything

Sometimes you create things before you fully understand why you are creating them.

I think that has been true of much of my work.

The making.

The scent.

The workshops.

The Interludes.

Back to Being.

The Willow Grove.

The desire to make spaces feel soft and unhurried.

The constant pull towards small groups, cups of tea, creativity, plants, quietness, honest conversations.

I used to think they were lots of different ideas.

Now I’m not sure they are.

I think the thread underneath all of them has always been the same:

I want to create places where people do not have to pretend.

Places where you do not have to earn your right to belong.

Places where you can be quiet.

Places where you can be odd.

Places where you can be grieving and still laugh.

Places where you can be overwhelmed and nobody immediately hands you a solution.

Places where you can make something with your hands because words are too difficult that day.

Places where somebody notices you.

Places where perhaps you notice yourself again too.

Sometimes there is no lesson

I also think we have become slightly obsessed with turning every difficult feeling into personal growth.

Everything has to teach us something.

Everything has to be reframed.

Everything has to become an affirmation, a lesson or a beautiful Instagram quote.

I don’t think that is always what we need.

Sometimes a day is awful.

Sometimes somebody has hurt you.

Sometimes you are exhausted.

Sometimes life feels unfair.

Sometimes you don’t feel grateful.

Sometimes you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And perhaps the first job isn’t to force yourself to see it.

Perhaps the first job is simply not to lie about where you are.

Sometimes you need to cry.

Sometimes you need to be angry.

Sometimes you need to write down all the things you would never say out loud.

Sometimes you need to sleep.

Sometimes you need somebody to sit next to you without trying to turn it into anything.

Feelings move.

But they cannot always move when we are gripping them tightly and telling ourselves they shouldn’t be there.

There is a strange kind of relief in saying:

This is where I am today.

I don’t like it.

I don’t intend to stay here forever.

But I am here.

I still don’t know exactly what this becomes

I don’t have a neat ending to this.

I don’t suddenly trust everyone.

I haven’t lost the urge to disappear into the woods.

There are still days when the world feels too much and people feel harder than solitude.

But something has shifted.

I’m starting to think that maybe the answer isn’t to find better ways of surviving alone.

Maybe it is to build better places to be together.

Small ones.

Human ones.

Imperfect ones.

Places where nobody has to fit.

Because maybe what so many of us are looking for isn’t another way to improve ourselves.

Maybe we are simply looking for somewhere we can put everything down for a little while.

And someone beside us who quietly says:

You can be here exactly as you are.

Maybe we need each other more than we realise.